A couple Smed interviews. - Page 2

Vexus · 01-21-2008, 10:44 AM

honestly the only way to stop something like this completely is to move away from credit cards. with 1,000,000,000,000 different combinations of numbers on a credit card, if only a small fraction of the numbers are valid, you're still talking millions of fraudulent cards. The only way you can guarantee is to force every person to buy something physical, be it the actual game, or a game card, they've at least invested some money into the system. I think ultimately the only thing to do to effectively combat it would be to BAN people who buy plat and make it public. Let it be known that either specific people, or numbers of people are being banned for BUYING plat. I know it hurts their paying customer base, but if people won't buy plat for fear of being banned, the farmer market will dry up very quick. Trying to cut off the supply will never work, farmers will always find ways around it, but cutting off the demand could work, people are going to be a lot less likely to buy plat if they know they could get banned.

SacDaddy · 01-21-2008, 05:12 PM

i agree. ban cheating fucks who buy plat. zero fucking tolerance.

Illuminator · 01-21-2008, 06:52 PM

So you move away from credit cards. To what? Wherever the point of sale occurs online, that's where the fraud will occur. I never went to a physical location for something as important as paying a mortgage, what makes you think I or others will do so for a gamecard?

Vexus · 01-22-2008, 04:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Illuminator

So you move away from credit cards. To what? Wherever the point of sale occurs online, that's where the fraud will occur. I never went to a physical location for something as important as paying a mortgage, what makes you think I or others will do so for a gamecard?

I'm by no means advocating making it physical only, I'm saying that if you want to ensure that people are paying at least in part require that you've bought something physical on an account, or on a credit card tied to another account that has, so that they can ensure that at some point you've spent money on the game that can't be taken back from them.
Personally, I'd hate the idea, but that is reallistically the only way that you could ensure that people are having to pay SOMETHING to play and if someone tries to return it, the retail company would have to eat some of it.
Personally I think the best solution is to ban plat buyers, make it public, and make it well known that you WILL eventually be caught if you buy plat, and you WILL be banned. Who's gonna buy plat knowing there's a good chance you're going to lose your character whenever that plat farmer is found out?

greyfin10 · 01-24-2008, 12:37 PM

A minor point here that may explain the slow and deliberate pace of change at SOE over these types of issues. While this is an important issue for them, at the same time they still have to continue to win and maintain customers. The more "roadblocks" you put in front of someone trying to buy the game, the fewer you sell. A nice article about barriers to entry (in this case for customers) is on Joel Spolsky's site... Strategy Letter III: Let Me Go Back! - Joel on Software. Basically his point is that to effectively win market share, you have to remove ALL barriers to switching for your customer.

I know for me, having to have a physical game (in the past, for regular EQ anway, you had to get a key from the physical product) was a pain since I multiboxed (3 for me and 3 for my girlfriend).

So, for every strategic move, SOE has to balance what it will do to their competitive position. Making it hard on the customer just to fix one problem might very easily create a worse problem in its wake.

Caswydian · 01-26-2008, 01:08 AM

The MMO industry really needs to develop an advocacy group similar to the MPAA or RIAA as a means to take collective action on these issues. This would include legislation, lawsuits, and cooperation with other industries like credit card companies to reform policies on digital purchases.

Illuminator · 01-29-2008, 05:29 PM

Domino had a nice quote in the dev tracker. Would be nice to discuss it further.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Domino

As Smedley himself mentions in the interview Calthine linked, these folks use stolen credit card information to buy new accounts. So Joe decides to buy himself some nice platinum to get a shiny new horse, well now he has a horse, but the folks he buys the platinum from have his credit card details, and use it to buy themselves a bunch of new accounts. The actual people selling the platinum may never even use a credit card of their own. And yes, the stolen credit card details can be banned -- bye bye Joe also, and all the accounts they bought, but in the mean time they also sold platinum to Sally, Fred, and John and have 50 more accounts still unbanned, and that number keeps increasing every time some other idiot buys platinum. And of course, when Joe, Sally, Fred, and John enquire why they were banned and discover they've been paying for numerous accounts they don't own, they reverse the charges, SOE lose lots of money, and everybody is unhappy except the platinum sellers who by now have probably picked up a dozen more credit cards to use instead.

If it were a simple solution, don't you think it would have been solved by now? There is every incentive for both company and players to be 100% against it, and we have some very, very smart people around here. They don't talk about what they're doing because every scrap of information can potentially help the plat sellers avoid being caught, but despite the silence there is stuff being done, and the entire industry is trying to find solutions.

But it ain't that simple. If only it were.

Shaggis · 01-30-2008, 04:20 PM

Part of this bugs me. It just doesn't seem good for return business to take your customer's credit card information and immediately fraudulently use it create accounts. It just can't be 1 for 1 ... you use a credit card to buy plat and they then immediately turn around and use it to charge you for shit you didn't buy. That business just seems like it wouldn't still be around. They have to be getting their cards from other sources, because I'm just having a hard time believing people would be stupid enough to buy plat again if they got the credit card stolen the last time they did.

I have no problem believing that fraudulent cards are used and then later the charges reversed costing SOE a shit ton of cash, I just don't see how they aren't coming from other sources. They'd exhaust the number of idiots who buy plat pretty quick wouldn't they?